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3S// 

^sSs- 


Copyright, 1923, by 

Gordon Bankers Publicity Corporation 



ATLANTIC PRINTING CO. 
BOSTON 

© Cl A757026 


AU(i 1*^ 191^3 

rvvQ j 



< \ (3 3 * / 


Introducing 

ROE FULKERSON 


k 


pERHAPS otje of the chief reasons why the 
X writings of Roe Fulkerson enjoy such pop¬ 
ularity is because their author is so clever at 
concealing so much common sense under a 
coating of humor. 

You find yourself smiling,, chuckling and 
then bursting forth into laughter at what seems 
to be some perfectly absurd statement^ and then,, 
suddenly,, without any warning at all, the con¬ 
cealed common sense gets in its deadly work 
upon you and you find yourself thinking what 
the poet called ^Hong, long thoughts!^ 

Roe Fulkerson does not get all his thoughts 
out of books. For years before he decided to de¬ 
vote all his time to writing he was a successful 
business man in Washington, D, C, He knows 
what it means to face a payroll every Saturday 
night. With most of the problems that confront 
business men, his own experience has made 
him well acquainted. 


3 





All through his life he has been a good mixer. 
He likes people and people naturally like him. 
He knows how to tell stories that send his hear¬ 
ers of into roars of laughter^ and immediately 
afterward utters a few sentences that send them 
away thinking deeply, 

Tfhe kind of stories that you will find in this 
little book^ for instance^ are stories you will 
want to read aloud to your friends. As you 
ready you will find yourself reminded of Bill 
or Jim or Jack or Mary—human beings with 
whom you have been acquainted all your life, 
^his little book is a human book because its 
author is an all-round human being. 

The Publishers. 


4 


I AM! 

S AID his customer to a barber; ^ 

don't believe I would open a shop in that 
neighborhood. There is too much competi¬ 
tion." 



“Competition!" exclaimed the barber. “I 
am not afraid of competition. / am going to 
be 

In less than a year he was. 

There is an ancient story of a lawyer who 
put a “Boy Wanted" sign at the foot of the 
stairs which led to his office. An hour later a 
lad stood in his door with the sign. 

“Did you put up this sign?" asked the lad. 

“I did," replied the lawyer. 

The boy began to tear up the sign. 

5 














I AM! 


“What are you doing?’' exclaimed the 
lawyer. 

“Why, I am the boy!” answered the lad. 

He was. 

A fat office-building janitor entered the 
colored ministry. When the church brethren 
to whom he applied for a position asked for 
his credentials, he said: 

“I am the best nigger preacher in this 
town.” 

He still holds that pastorate. 

The Bible says, “As a man thinketh in his 
heart, so is he.” 

Egotism is as necessary to success as a 
brass band to a parade. 

You know yourself. Other people are apt 
to take your own estimate of yourself because 
they know you have inside information. 

“I hope to be. It is my ambition, I wish I 
were” are prefixes of failure. “I intend to be, 
I am” are good ways to spell success. 

“I am” is the confident beginning of every 
statement of the three incidents just given. 

“I wish” is the squeal of a lazy, cornered 
rat; “I am” is the jubilant whoop of a winner. 

Puzzles are a drug on the market. People 
haven’t time to solve them. The “may-be- 
6 




I AM! 


so” business man is a puzzle to the rest of the 
world. They haven't time to solve it. The “I 
am” person is as honest a proposition as a 
bow-legged girl in a short skirt. 

Don’t sit in the sad corner looking like the 
fifth reel of that solemn picture, “Out of fifty 
million people what made ’em pick on me!” 



Talk like a winner, dress like a winner, 
feel like a winner, and they can no more head 
you off than they can a big snowball on a hill¬ 
side. The farther you roll, the bigger you get 
and the faster you go. 

Ready-made success isn’t. Success is not 
buyable like a pound of prunes. It’s a state 
of mind, like a belief in your home team, your 
sweetheart and the fit of your dress coat in 
the back. 


7 












I AM! 


Want to change your weekly insult to a 
salary? Have confidence in yourself. The best 
salesman is he who believes in his goods. He 
can make others believe. Believe in yourself 
and others will believe in you. Give yourself 
the honest 0.0. in a mirror, and answer 
frankly the question, “Would you place in a 
good position a guy who looks like that?’' 

It never hurts a smile to crack it. It never 
hurts a pants to press it. “Blessed are the 
meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Yes, 
but only after the winners get through with 
it. 

Go meet ’em. Don’t grab your hat and run 
at a jack-o’-lantern, but go get the pumpkin 
and make a pie! 

“I am” is the first horse under the wire. 
Mud-spattered second “I hope” and “I 
wish” are also-rans! 


8 






MY INSTANT 

T HAVE just had a talk with my friend, the 
burglar. He is a very good burglar. He 
burgles well as burglars go, and gets out of 
jail once in a while to enjoy his profession 
and the excitements of robbing safes which 



aren't in the dead of night. This time, when 
he came out (you can guess from where) I 
asked him if he found it paid to be a burglar 
and why he didn't try not burgling, for a 
change. Then he said to me: 

“Why don't you try burgling for a change? 
Oh, of course, you will say you can't, that you 
are honest, and wouldn't be happy if you 
burgled. But if you tell yourself the truth, 
you will admit that the reason you are honest 


9 






MY INSTANT 


is because you’re afraid to be a thief; afraid 
of getting caught, afraid of jail, afraid of 
what people will say.” 

So, when my burglar friend had gone— 
perhaps to plan some new excitement and 
insure himself another five years of peaceful, 
quiet life—I asked myself if what he said 
was true, and if I was “good” (as the law 
counts goodness) because I was afraid of 
punishment and not because I wanted to be 
good. 

I honestly think my burglar friend is 
wrong. Not long ago I read a very odd little 
Norse legend (at least, I think it was Norse— 
it isn’t American, anyhow). It runs to the ef¬ 
fect that at the top o’ the world there is a 
great rock, a hundred miles long and a hun¬ 
dred miles high and a hundred miles wide; a 
million cubic miles of rock. Once in every 
thousand years, so runs the legend, a little 
bird comes to sharpen his beak upon the 
great rock. And when, so the story goes, the 
whole rock shall thus have been worn away, 
there will have passed by one day of eternity. 

It’s a long time, eternity. Measured by 
this legend, I have only the tiniest fraction of 
a second of one of its days. Now, if I had just 


lO 





MY INSTANT 


one more hour to live, anywhere in this life of 
mine on earth, I know that I wouldn’t care to 
use it burgling. If I only had an hour, it 
wouldn’t do me any good to burgle, even if I 
burgled the wealth of Midas. For I couldn’t 
spend it in that hour, and if I could, I 
couldn’t enjoy the fruits of what it would 
purchase. I would rather use that hour to see 
a sunset, or listen to a bird sing, or watch the 
ripple of a brook over stones, or hear a child 
laugh, or look deep into those Other Eyes 
that have never been able to see the com¬ 
mon clay in me, but find, somehow, in my 
face only something fine and lovable. 

But if I would do this with my one hour of 
life, why will I not do the same with my little 
tiny second of a day of eternity. And so I 
answer my burglar, though I am afraid he is 
too practical to understand, that it isn’t 
really because I am afraid of his jail or his 
laws or his policemen or what people will say 
that I don’t burgle or murder or try to gain 
an undue advantage for myself over my fel¬ 
low men, but merely that I haven’t time, in 
my little fraction of eternity’s day, to waste 
on such things. 

There is so much, so very much that is 


II 





MY INSTANT 


worth while to do; there is music to hear, and 
perhaps to make; there is poetry to read 
and memorize, there are great thoughts of 
great men to be understood, and perhaps— 
who knows—perhaps I, too, may one day 
think a great thought. There are people to 
love and to serve and work to be done; worth¬ 
while work, work good for its own sake as 
well as what it may accomplish for others. 

Oh, no, friend burglar; I haven't time for 
your law-breaking; I have but one instant. 
Maybe, even now, the little bird is wearing 
away that part of the Great Rock which rep¬ 
resents my life. If so, I must hurry, and so I 
have no time to bother with such useless and 
non-essential things as breaking laws for per¬ 
sonal gain. I have to go and watch the sun 
rise and see a mother look Heaven out of her 
eyes at her new-born baby. I haven't time to 
be bad. 


12 




MONGEESE 


^ INHERE are several things in this world I 
have always wanted to see. I have always 
wanted to see a man leave a room in a high 
dudgeon. I have always wanted to see some 



person take umbrage. If I could arrange it, I 
would like to see someone first take umbrage 
and then leave the room in a high dudgeon. 
I have never seen either a high dudgeon or an 
umbrage. 

And I have always wanted to see a mon¬ 
goose and to know if one speaks of two of 
them as mongeese. I believe one would, al¬ 
though I have never seen one, let alone two. 

All this is preliminary to something quite 
different and is written with the idea of get- 

13 








MONGEESE 


ting you by the lack of your attention so you 
will read on. 

We should be careful not to introduce new 
organisms—a man is an organism—into new 
environment. Let's go down to Jamaica for 
a minute. Once rats almost took Jamaica and 
ran away with it. What they didn't carry 
away they ate up. A mongoose is as fond of 
rats as an Eskimo is of a sperm candle, so 
the Jamaicans imported a lot of mongeese to 
eat up the rats. The rats were soon exter¬ 
minated. The rodents gone, the mongeese 
still had to eat, so they began on the chickens 
and the birds. As the feathered population of 
Jamaica grew smaller the injurious insects 
and ticks on which the birds and hens used to 
dine began to multiply and increase. Now 
the ticks have started to eat the mongeese. 
Thus the whirligig of nature is bringing 
things back to their natural balance. The 
Jamaicans have no quarrel with this except 
that their introduction of mongeese only 
swapped one pest for another. They lost a 
lot of chickens and crops and time and suf¬ 
fered from a lot of waste before the laws of 
nature accomplished the readjustment. 

I know an insurance man who invested the 


14 





MONGEESE 


savings of a lifetime in a chicken farm and 
lost it in a year. The man who sold the chicken 
farm invested the money in a cigar store, 
which lasted eighteen months. The man who 
sold him the cigar store dropped its price in 
one season running a summer hotel he bought. 

Mongeese! 



Every city dweller dreams of the day 
when he will have money enough to move 
out into the country and become a bunga- 
loafer. The flat dweller wants to become a 
cultivator of succotash and an encourager of 
the growth of onions and butter beans. He 
desires to be a Luther Burbank and plant an 
eggplant and a milkweed under a sugar tree, 
and try by cross pollenization to produce a 
custard vine. 








MONGEESE 


Per contra, as a Harvard man would say, 
the faithful farmer who has stepped high 
over plowed ground for most of his life wants 
to buy a yacht and sail the bounding main. 
He itches to swap his incubator for a hatch¬ 
way. Instead of being hoisted on the hind 
heels of a mule he wants to hoist a jib boom 
spanker to the main mast. 

It’s queer that so many of these bungalows 
in the country wear a “For Sale” sign. It’s 
odd that the fondest dream of many a man 
with a yacht is some day to be able to sell it 
to some fellow who doesn’t know it costs 
nine hundred dollars per foot, mile, or per 
ton, sail, or something, to keep a yacht 
bounding over the main. 

It is the novel, the unattainable which ever 
haunts the corridors of heart’s desire. It’s a 
queer streak in us. The man who was reared 
in a flat so small he had to go out in the hall 
to change his mind sighs for the Bill Hart 
open places. If he got in them he would either 
sit down in a cactus or ride a pony till he 
couldn’t sit down at all. 

The cowboy in the open places sighs for 
the lobster pots of Broadway, all unknowing 
that if a haughty head waiter gave him the 

i6 




MONGEESE 


0.0. and the up and down he would wilt like 
a cemetery on May 31. 

All of which is going on to say that nine 
tirnes out of ten, if our dreams come true, 
they would turn out to be nightmares, and if 
we could exchange what we have for what 



we think we want, we would soon bend all 
our wabbly energies to getting back what we 
had. 

To live, to laugh, to love in surroundings 
to which we are accustomed, to do the work 
we are used to and to get our joy out of it, 
beats the sound of the surf on the reef at 
Tahiti all hollow. To shoot pool with the 
people we understand and who understand 
us is better than to shoot lions in Somaliland. 

Remember O. Henry's “Ikey," who wanted 

17 









MONGEESE 


to shake hands with the bar keep, whose 
main ambition was to shake hands with the 
ward boss, whose one desire was to shake 
hands with the big business man, who ached 
to shake hands with the king of finance, who 
became disgusted with too much refinement 
and honed after democracy and, meeting 
Ikey on the street, gratified a lifelong longing 
for intimate contact with the proletariat 
by shaking hands with him? 

All of which circumambulation circum¬ 
navigates me back to the beginning of this 
yarn and the things I have always wanted to 
see and never have yet—umbrages and high 
dudgeons and mongeese. 

I wonder, am I one or all of ^em! 





FOURRAGERE 

T HAVE just found out about a fourragere. 

Like a child who has learned a new riddle, 
I want to tell everyone about it. I got my in¬ 
formation from a U. S. marine, so modest I 



had to pull it out of him like pulling a splinter 
out of the toe of a barefooted boy. 

The emblem on his collar showed he belonged 
to the Sixth Division. He had this olive-drab 
cord looped around his arm, with two orna¬ 
ments dangling. That cord is a fourragere. 

He explained that back in the old days 
when all men were soldiers, there was in 
Spain a Duke of Alva, who was the scrappiest 
old thing in those parts. Under his command 
was a flock of Flemish soldiers who had one 
yellow streak and two yellov/ feet each. 




FOURRAGERE 


In a big battle when fighting was hottest, 
this crowd of Flemings decided it was time 
to hurry home and tell the folks how it was 
all going. 

They left in such haste that they tossed 
aside their hats and, although they were in¬ 
fantrymen, some of them arrived home ahead 
of the officers who rode horseback. 

This cowardice so peeved the Duke that he 
issued orders that every Flemish soldier, re¬ 
gardless of rank, who in future sprouted a 
white feather and tried to use it to fly home 
out of a fight, should be hanged instanter. 

The humiliation of this order produced in 
the Flemings a change of heart. They were so 
ashamed of this cowardice that they said they 
would facilitate the execution of the order. 
From that time on each man wore into every 
battle a piece of rope long enough to hang 
him. On the end of the rope he put a big nail, 
heavy enough to hold his body. 

With this brand of cowardice on them the 
Flemings went into battle after battle. Their 
bravery became so conspicuous that at last 
the Duke ordered the rope changed to a 
braid of passementerie and the nail changed 
±o the ornament at the end. 


20 






FOURRAGERE 


Thus did a badge of cowardice become a 
symbol of bravery and honor, and ever since 
it has been worn as a decoration by officers 
of princely households. It was this decoration 



which the French government used in deco¬ 
rating the Fifth and Sixth Regiments of our 
U. S. Marine Corps for bravery. 

That’s all about the fourragere. 

Let’s talk about other unpleasant things 
besides a streak of yellow and a pair of cold 
feet. Do you stutter? Are you a bit deaf? 
Were you unfortunate enough to be born 
with a club foot or a red head? Did you hap¬ 
pen to miss an education in your early youth? 
Are you a natural spendthrift? 

Such things as these are the rope and nail 
put around your neck by Fate when you 
come into this world. Have you ever thought 


21 









FOURRAGERE 


that, like the Flemings, you may turn your 
halter into a badge of honor? 

A robin with a broken leg will still sing. A 
seed which sprouts under a rock will curve 
round the stone and in the straightness of its 
main stem the tree will make you forget it is 
twisted at the root. 

If the Flemings had quit cold after the 
first fight, all the rest of the Flemings in the 
world and their children and their children's 
children after them would have gone down 
through the ages branded as a race of cowards. 

The waster who comes back and saves, the 
redhead who makes his flaming thatch a 
badge of courage, the man with the twisted 
foot who makes people forget it or look on it 
as a symbol of intellect, the uneducated man 
who makes his way despite his handicap, are 
all examples of turning a rope and a nail into 
a fourragere to be sought after, made into a 
badge of honor, worn with infinite pride. 

My rope and nail are a bald bean and half 
blind eyes. In spite of these, I collected a 
wife and a living. You doubtless have your 
rope and nail. Just what are you doing with 
them? It is strictly up to you, you know; 
they will hang you if you will let them! 


22 





THIRTY-SIX ARE DEAD 

T HATE statistics, don’t you? 

Whenever some fellow pulls a table of 
statistics on me to prove I am wrong, I al¬ 
ways bump into it. 

I never saw a statistical table which did 




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' /a Off ^ 


not make its owner’s tongue make three 
thousand revolutions a minute, while his 
mind was set in neutral. 

The bankers have a union. They call it 
the American Bankers Association. Of course 
if you get a lot of birds like that in one cage, 
they think like a warehouse full pf adding 
machines. 

Some time ago they added us all up and 
put down figures, representing facts gathered 
from their experience with us. 

23 





THIRTY-SIX ARE DEAD 


They based their figures on an average one 
hundred of us and found that, at the age of 35, 
75 of us are self-supporting, 10 of us are well 
off, 10 of us are wealthy, and 5 of us are in 
the cemetery. 

At the age of 45, only 65 of us are self-sup¬ 
porting, 15 of us are on the shelf with others 
supporting us, 16 of us are dead, and only 4 
are wealthy. 

Hop over ten years again to the age of 55, 
and only 46 are self-supporting, 30 are de¬ 
pendent on their children or in-laws for a 
living, 20 of us are dead, i wealthy, and 3 
well off. 

But look what happens to us in another 
ten years. At 65, only 6 of us are able to 
make a living. Fifty-four of us are now de¬ 
pendent on our relatives for support or are in 
institutions, 36 of us are dead, i is still 
wealthy, and only 3 of us are well off. 

Staggering, isn’t it? 

It is a well-demonstrated fact that no man 
ever gets very far ahead working for other 
people. It is also a fact that only a few of us 
can be employers; most of us must be salaried 
employees. 

But there is one accommodating chap in 


24 





THIRTY-SIX ARE DEAD 


the world who will work for us, even we who 
work for others, if we ask him. Luckily, there 
is one in the world who will work for anybody. 

All your life you have heard people say: 
“Let George do it.” If you will just let the 



right George do it, you will be out of the 
bunch of 54 who live on charity after the age 
of 65, and into the select class of 3 who are 
well off. 

George, like all high-class gentlemen, has 
three names. There is a certain amount of 
class about three names as there is about 
wearing a wide eyeglass ribbon or spats. 

George’s full name on the payroll is Mr. 
George Sinking Fund. Put him on your pay¬ 
roll and the age of 65 will hold no terrors for 
for you. 

When George is working for you, you get 
interest instead of paying it. That’s all there 

25 






THIRTY-SIX ARE DEAD 


is to in this world. The man who does 

nothing but pay interest is the failure; the 
man who gets it is the 

Put George to work for you. Pay him so 
much every week out of your salary; put his 
pay in a savings bank, or purchase on install¬ 
ments a gilt-edge bond on the advice of your 
banker, or buy shares in a building and loan 
company for George. 

Mr. George Sinfing Fund brings prosper¬ 
ity to any man or woman who lets him work 
for them. It makes no difference whether you 
have a monthly income or a weekly insult, 
there is room for George on your own pay¬ 
roll. 

Do you like your in-laws? Pardon me, I am 
a married man and know that’s not a fair 
question. Are you willing to be dependent on 
your children or your relatives? You are flirt¬ 
ing with the possibility unless you “let George 
do it” for you. 

Why fritter life away working for other 
people when you can hire George to work for 
you and avoid a spill at the finish of life’s hill ? 

P.S. Unlike most employees, you can bor¬ 
row from George in emergency without 
embarrassment. 


26 




WHAT DO YOU WANT? 

OU can be what you want to be/' 
Sounds like the beginning of an up¬ 
lift story in a magazine of success, doesn't it? 
But this is not a “Be good and you'll be 
happy" yarn. Far be it from such. 



It's a statement of fact which few people 
believe because they don't put the right in¬ 
terpretation on “what you want." 

“It's not so," says the chap who reads as 
he runs, “because I want to be a very rich 
man and I work for a small salary." By the 
way, I have always wanted to see a chap 
who can read as he runs. 

“It's not so," says the student of music, 
“because I want to be a great performer, yet 
people look pained when I play." 

27 








WHAT DO YOU WANT? 


'‘It’s not so,” says the careless and forget¬ 
ful man, “because I wish I were neat and I 
want to remember her telephone number, 
but I never do.” 

But it is so. 

The man who wants to be rich and who 
isn’t doesn’t really want to be rich. He’d like 
to have riches shot into his cellar with a coal 
chute wagon. He doesn’t really want them, or 
he’d get them. Why isn’t he rich.?* Because he 
can’t do the things for which big money is 
paid. 

Why can’t he do them.^ Because he had to 
go to work and make a living, or because he 
likes to play golf better than to spend his 
afternoons learning something or because he 
didn’t have ambition, or because of a thou¬ 
sand and one other things he wanted more 
than he wanted mazuma. 

The musical student would like to have 
someone touch his fingers with a magic wand, 
say “Abra ca dabra” and make him a second 
Paderewski, but he doesn’t want to be a star 
performer bad enough to do what Paderewski 
did; paw ivory ten hours a day; live piano, 
think piano, dream piano; do nothing else, 
night and day, but study music, with all the 
28 





WHAT DO YOU WANT? 


passion and intense desire in his soul. The 
would-be great performer practices two or 
three hours a day, goes to the theater, plays 
cards, enjoys life. . . . wants, in other words^ 
other things as well as musical perfection. 

The man who is careless and forgets the 
baby and the perambulator at the corner 
grocery would like to be made neat and of 
good memory by some process which would 
put inside his coat pocket an automatic pick- 
er-up and a self-starting memory. But he 
doesn't want these things badly enough to 
work for them. He never forgets to open the 
mail in which is a thousand-dollar check, and 
he never misplaces his liberty bonds. He is 
neat and of accurate memory here, because 
he wants to be. If he really wanted to be ac¬ 
curate and neat always, he could be, would 
be. He isn’t . . . therefore he doesn’t want 
these things as much as he wants the mental 
comfort which comes with carelessness and 
indifferent habits. 

You can be what you want to be, have 
what you want to have, if you are willing to 
pay the price. If you really want, you will 
not count the price. If you do count the price, 
and refuse to pay it, be sure your “want” is 
29 





WHAT DO YOU WANT? 


a mere happy-go-lucky desire, not a real need 
of your soul. 

It must be said in fairness to all who have 
really tried with all their hearts to satisfy an 
all-consuming desire, and yet failed, that 
there are some who are given ambition and 
need and yet nature slips up in failing to give 
them the necessary capacity. 

But that's not you. 

You've got brains! You would be perfectly • 
willing to admit it if you were backed into a 
corner. You are at least of more than average 
intelligence. 

Now! Being of more than average intelli¬ 
gence and being just what you are in music, 
in literature, in art and in your batting aver¬ 
age in the bank, you are just where you be¬ 
long. Quit kidding yourself. You have all you 
hustled for and no more. 

If you think I am wrong, get a hump on 
you like a camel and show me so! Make your 
“I want it" hit on all six and you will make 
the grade! 


30 




POMOLOGY DAY BY DAY 


A FELLOW introduced me to Jim at a 
club one day. I rather liked the cuss and 
asked his method of solving the bread-and- 
butter problem. 

‘‘I am a pomologist/’ he said. 



Long time ago I heard that a fellow who 
required four syllables to tell his occupation 
was a chop-your-corn-olFadist. But I thought 
of “palm” and “ologist” and decided Jim was 
a cross ’twixt a palmist and a phrenologist and 
hence some kind of new-thought fortune teller. 

Just for fear you are “one of them city 
slickers” who was never slapped in the short 
ribs with a plow handle Fll tell you that Jim 
is an orchardist. 

31 















POMOLOGY DAY BY DAY 


All this is leading up to something Jim 
told me. We were talking about trees. I al¬ 
ways like to let a fellow ride his hobby, and 
Jim was certainly a throw-back to our arbo- 
rial ancestors, for he was crazy about trees. 

Jim explained to me that every high-grade 
apple tree is simply a continuation of the 
growth of a single tree. A high-bred apple 
tree has no ancestors or grandparents. If you 
have a Stark Delicious, a Rhode Island Red 
or a Poland China apple tree in your back¬ 
yard you naturally suppose that your Stark 
Delicious is a son or daughter of Mr. and 
Mrs. Stark Delicious. Nothing of the sort. 
Your Stark Delicious is simply a leg cut off 
of the original Stark Delicious himself and is 
a part of him. 

No marriage or giving in marriage, no 
mothers-in-law, nor cousins, in high-class 
apple-tree families. 

They simply cut a limb off of the original, 
graft it in a low-brow apple tree, and behold 
—a new member of the family. All the Stark 
Delicious apple trees are parts of the original 
Mr. Stark Delicious. 

They may cut some limb off of your tree 
and make yet other apple trees and so on. 





POMOLOGY DAY BY DAY 


but they are all still just a part of that orig¬ 
inal old man Stark Delicious. 

Not every one of these trees will produce a 
big crop of apples. Some have more and some 
less fruit. Not all of these trees will produce 
apples of the same size. Some are big and 
some are little. Not all of the trees will pro¬ 
duce the same fine flavor. Some are more and 
some less delicious. 

But in no case is this the fault of the tree. 
It is all the same tree. 

The variations from the high character of 
old man Stark Delicious are variations in 
environment. The richness of the soil, the 
amount of spraying, the cultivation, the cli¬ 
mate make the differences in quality, quan¬ 
tity and size. 

You have a part of the original tree. It is 
up to you to produce the fruit. 

Now for the moral! 

You got your religion at your mother’s 
knee. It was that same religion which made 
her the sweetest, kindest, most lovable wo¬ 
man in the world. What did you do with it.^ 
Did you cultivate it, refresh it and keep it 
sweet and clean, or did you neglect it.^ 

You had your education in the same school 

33 




POMOLOGY DAY BY DAY 


as many great men of the world. Did you 
keep the flame burning on your altar or did 
you, with the same opportunity, fail? 

You live under the same glorious constitu¬ 
tion as did George Washington and Patrick 
Henry. How do you line up with Pat and 
George? Go look in the glass. 

You learned the same trade, craft or pro¬ 
fession as did the men whose pictures you 
have on the wall of your workshop or en¬ 
shrined in your heart. Did you cultivate, 
ennoble and develop that job, or are you 
just a dub at it? 

Did you ever feel sorry for yourself? Do 
you ever complain at your hard luck? Do you 
ever envy the other fellow? 

If so, just recall that you had a part of the 
same religion, patriotism, education and op¬ 
portunity as did the fellows who succeeded, 
and if you have failed, the fault lies with you 
alone; and . . . and . . . remember that a 
pomologist is not a fortune teller and that 
high-bred apple trees have no mothers-in-law. 


34 





CRAZY-I ADMIT IT! 


^ OHE difference between you and me is that 
while we both have wild ideas and weird 
desires and curious impulses and live a 
thought life which is quite different from 
our real life, you are sensible and keep quiet 



about it, and I wear motley and tell it! I 
can't tell a sharp from a flat, and a clef and a 
half-note look alike to me; but I have always 
wanted to play the bull fiddle in an orchestra 
and I have always wanted to know why and 
how a man raised sufficient courage to trans¬ 
late this desire into actuality. 

At least once a month I commit a well- 
planned and desirable murder. It is rarely of 
any particular person; it is just someone who 

35 












CRAZY— I ADMIT IT! 


carries an umbrella under his arm and jabs 
my wishbone with it. I plan it all out from 
the fatal blow to the getaway. I always fool 
the police, too. So far I have been a peaceable 
and law-abiding citizen, and I can’t even step 
on a cockroach; but maybe my mental mur¬ 
ders and the mental murders of the actual 
murderer are the same. 

Every small boy wants to be a part of a 
circus. I never grew up so that I didn’t want 
to be a part of a circus. I would give a good 
deal right this minute if I could run away and 
join a circus. I wouldn’t much care whether 
it was as press agent or mess boy, tent-pole 
guard or ticket seller, tight-rope artist or 
clown; I’d like to travel with a circus, live 
with a circus, be a circus man, know circus 
people. My better half, to whom in a moment 
of temporary mental aberration I once con¬ 
fided this yearning, informs me that I am a 
circus right now, but that is by the way, and 
doesn’t satisfy a desire a-tall. 

If I look in the looking-glass I see a billiard 
ball for a head, enough time-lines to tell the 
world that I am somewhere in the vicinity of 
the fifty years I have lived, and not even in 
my dreams can I fancy myself a modern rival 
36 




CRAZY—I ADMIT IT! 


of Adonis. Yet I confess to a hankering to 
experience, for once in a way, that care-free 
existence lived by the gay Lotharios of the 
screen who have but to waggle their eye¬ 
lashes in the general direction of the nearest 
beautiful and unsophisticated country maiden 
to have her forget home and mother and 
come to the Great City and—Oh, shucks! 
You don’t have to tell me that even if the 
partner of my flivver and my pocketbook 
would let me, I wouldn’t. I know that. But— 
say, lookit here! Just look in your own 
thoughts. I think that way, too. 

I have always had an itch to go exploring. 
Peary’s North Pole, Tut-ankh-amen’s tomb, 
Stanley’s darkest Africa, O’Brien’s South 
Seas, Younghusband’s Tibet—I don’t much 
care. Of course I know that North Pole ex¬ 
plorers are cold—and I hate to be cold; and 
that Carnarvon and Carter have swallowed 
tons of dust and been grimy and uncomfort¬ 
able—and I despise dust and discomfort; and 
that Africa is full of fleas and things—and I 
despise them; and that O’Brien talks about 
leprosy as I would about measles—and I 
have never coveted any man his leprosy, 
honest. xAnd I suppose if it came to a show- 

37 





CRAZY—I ADMIT IT! 


down, I’d stay home and write stories, and 
ask my secretary how to spell, and insult my 
stomach as I do now. But inside of me is that 
exploring itch. 

But, goodness me! I have never been any 
one of those things and I never will be. 

There is no chance of my playing a bass 
fiddle. You can’t even get one on the street 
car to go some place to play it. I will never 
murder anyone or turn flip-flaps in a circus. 
I will never vamp a chicken, for I am too old; 
they laugh at me instead of with me. I will 
never explore anything except the attic of my 
own house, hunting fishing tackle. 

I have to work so much every day, save so 
much every week, and be a regular citizen 
and get my adventures out of books. Do you 
know it’s a lot more fun doing most things 
out of books? Any time I feel like acting odd, 
I just buy a book in which other people do it. 
They always come out right in the end. 

Just the same, I would like to travel with 
a circus! What would you like to do? 


38 




GROUNDED? 

T OOK under the next big tank gasoline 
wagon you see. I don’t mean you are to 
make a goose of yourself. You don’t need to 
get down on your hands and knees and gawk 
around beneath it. Just glance sort-of casu¬ 
ally under it. 



When you do look under one of these big 
tank wagons which deliver the gasoline to 
the local gasoline burglar you will see a chain 
dragging on the ground and will think, as I 
thought, that it was carelessness on the part 
of the tank-wagon chauffeur. 

Nothing of the sort. If you call his atten¬ 
tion to the chain and tell him to pick it up he 
will give you a raucous laugh. Maybe you 

39 









GROUNDED? 


will tell him just to hear someone laugh a 
raucous laugh. There are not a lot of people 
who can laugh one. 

The one I talked to about the dragging 
chain which is under every tank wagon, told 
me that when gasoline was new and other 
liquids plentiful, a lot of these wagons blew 
up while driving along the street and sent 
the driver and various and sundry bystanders 
to a sudden settling of their accounts. 

The scientific sharps discovered that the 
friction of the gas sloshing around in the tank 
or the friction of the wagon on the ground or 
something developed some sort of dynamic 
or static or gasolinic electricity, and, blooie! 
up went the whole works. 

The same scientific fellows who found out 
what the cause was, also found the remedy. 
So they put lightning rods on the wagon. A 
lightning rod has to be grounded, so they 
fasten these chains on gas wagons and as they 
move from robber’s roost to robber’s roost 
the chains drag and drain off the electricity. 

As a result of this scientific discovery, gaso¬ 
line wagons last longer, and the inevitable 
punishment of the gasoline man is postponed. 

Every man is full of this static, dynamic. 


40 




GROUNDED? 


driveling, idiotic electricity, which is apt to 
blow him up at any time. He gets “het up” 
and tells the boss to go to the dickens. He 
generates and runs off to the South Sea Is¬ 
lands or down to Cuba. He gets all fussed up 
from reading one of Rex Beach's stories and 



ships on a like juicer to Australia. His elec¬ 
tricity or something makes him elope with 
the ‘^stenog” or the bank balance. 

What are we going to do about it? Why, 
ground him of all this foolishness. Give him, 
in other words, a sense of responsibility. 

Sell him a “Why Pay Rent?” out in the 
outskirts of town and let him become a bun- 
galoafer and keep a bee! 

I^ Get him behind a honeysuckle bowered 
veranda on a moonlight night with a henna- 
41 











GROUNDED? 


haired chicken who is tired of toddling and 
wants to learn that homey little song, “Bye, 
Baby Bunting, Papa’s Gone a-Hunting.” 

Make him buy a thousand-dollar bond on 
credit and start a bank account with which 
to pay for it. 

Give him an object in life. Give him a goal 
to gain; give him something to work for. 

Why shouldn’t the poor gas wagon blow 
up when it just makes the same rounds day 
after day, always going and never getting 
anywhere ? 

Why shouldn’t the poor boy get interested 
in hootchleggers and girls he wouldn’t intro¬ 
duce to his sisters when he has nothing but 
the treadmill to go through, just stepping 
and stepping like that tall blonde on the end 
of the chorus line who just holds a tin spear 
and marks time all through the song of the 
principal ? 

I suspect there is a moral in this tale some 
place, if you will hunt for it. Personally, I am 
going to polish up my grounding chain by 
reading a South Sea Island story by O’Brien! 


42 




VOICE OF THE TURTLE 

T AM rather old and not many things worry 

^ me. 

I am rather old and most of my ambitions 
have been either gratified or abandoned. 

There are three things, though, I have 
always wanted to see or hear. I have always 


wanted to hear a welkin ring. I have always 
hoped to see someone shoot a woman who 
carried an umbrella under her arm with the 
steel ferrule out, and I have always wanted to 
listen to a turtle sing. 

I have about given up hope of the first two. 
Since I was a boy so small I had to stand on 
tiptoe to reach the cookie jar, I have wanted 
a turtle to sing for me. Now I wonder. . . . 

43 






VOICE OF THE TURTLE 


A verse of Solomon's song I recall so well— 
I do not have to use the Concordance to find 
it—says: “The flowers appear on the earth, 
the time of the singing of birds is come, and 
the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.” 

That would seem to mean that turtles sing 
in the spring, so every spring when I go fish¬ 
ing and get lumbago, or go picnicking and let 
the red ants turn my body into a public play¬ 
ground, I think of the singing turtle. 

A boy came in to see me this morning to 
get me to find him a job. I got him a job or 
two before, so I asked him why he left the 
last one. He said: “I had hard luck. I had no 
chance. They promoted men over my head. 
My work was unappreciated. The boss never 
gave me a show. Every time I was a little 
late in the morning I got called down.” 

As I listened to this alibi it occurred to me 
that maybe this was the voice of the turtle. 

A turtle is a mighty low-down animal. His 
differential hardly clears the ground. He pulls 
his head in when he is in trouble and ducks. 
He spends most of his time loafing on a root 
or a mud bank. As I sat and pondered this, 
wondering if at last I was hearing the voice 
of the turtle, a man came in to see me. I had 


44 





VOICE OF THE TURTLE 


left my car with him to be painted. He had 
promised it for today. He said: “I never had 
such hard luck with a car in my life. It has 



been raining a lot, the dust settled on it once 
and I had to repaint it. The color was not 
right and I had to do it all over again. My 
foreman quit on me and then the varnish ran 
and . . 

It is spring. Again I hear the voice of the 
turtle. 

The telephone bell rang at my elbow and a 
voice said: “I am sorry I am not going to 
be able to meet that payment. I have had 
some hard luck. I had some unexpected 
expense this month. I saw a new rug that 
would just fit my living-room floor and . . 

45 
















VOICE OF THE TURTLE 


Over the telephone sang the voice of the 
turtle. 

My tailor called up about the spring suit he 
was to deliver before I take the train to the 
town where I want to make a good impression. 

“We have had hard luck with that suit of 
yours. I am not going to be able to get it 
ready for you on time and • • •'' 

Again the voice of the turtle is heard in 
our land. All hard-luck stories are the voices 
of turtles. All alibis are turtle songs. All ex¬ 
cuses for failure to keep promises are the sad 
lament of singing turtles. 

The world has never petted turtles. No 
one suggests them as daily companions for 
little children. No phonograph records ever 
carried a turtle song. The world has no use 
for turtles and never cares to hear them sing. 

The turtle’s hard-luck story is the whine 
of a weakling. The turtle’s alibi is the wail of 
a failure. The turtle’s excuse and self-pity is 
the mark of an “almost man.” 

Do you ever sing a turtle song? If so, I had 
better stop, or I might hurt your feelings . . . 
or don’t turtle singers have feelings? 


46 




EUCALYPTUS? 

T HAVE been down on Pistol River, fishing. 

They call it Pistol River for two reasons; 
first, because its shores are peopled entirely 
by darkies, none of whom ever had money 
enough to buy a pistol, and because it is not 



a river, but just a tidal slough from the back 
waters of Chesapeake Bay. 

Cap'n George took me fishing. He always 
does because, as “it is not all of life to live 
nor all of death to die,'’ so also it is not all of 
fishing to fish. Someone has to row the boat. 

Cap'n George is a captain because he owns 
a sailboat. Everybody on Pistol River owns 
a sailboat, and everybody who owns a sail¬ 
boat is a Cap'n, so of course everybody is 

47 






EUCALYPTUS? 


Cap'n somebody. Cap’n George is a darkey 
at whom some 8o years have nibbled without 
doing him any especial damage except to 
whiten his wool and ripen his philosophy. 

For instance: 

One day while we were fishing, a boat drew 
near with a sportsman who had been fitted 
out by a sports-goods house which was having 
a clearance sale. He had nine thousand dol¬ 
lars' worth of fancy clothes, and fishing 
tackle, flies, rods, landing nets, gaff, and 
brightly nickeled reels made him glitter like 
an ice wagon on a July morning. 

His reel sang merrily as his first fish ran. 
He worried it in close to the boat, but it took 
another five-hundred-yard run. Back again 
he reeled him; another dash carried the fish 
under the boat. The fisherman worked pa¬ 
tiently and next time almost reached him 
with the landing net, but again he dashed 
away. Cap’n George grunted impatiently. 
“Lawdy,” he said, “that fish has a lot of pa¬ 
tience wid dat man." 

Cap'n George has a son y'clept Eucalyp¬ 
tus. “Uke" is not much of a success as a fish¬ 
erman. He doesn't catch many fish. I asked 
Cap'n George why. 


48 





EUCALYPTUS? 


''I don’ jes know,” he said, meditatively; 
'*Uke is flighty. Las’ Saturday he done get 
out his drif-net an’ pile in his boat and sail 
out to Raggaty Pint bar to drif’ for sheeps- 
head. Sheepshead is a mighty fine fish. Be- 
for’ he go dar he change his mind an’ seines 
some shrimp bait in de grass. Den he tacks 



’cross back of Jones Slough to fish for rock. 
Rock is good eatin’. When he goes ’round dat 
buoy at de big eddy he sees a kingfisher wid 
a black bass, so he done changeh is min’ 
again an’ goes after some peeler bait to fish 
fo’ black bass. Black bass is juicy fish. He 
ain’t fished long till he sees a mess of por¬ 
poises an’ hauls over dat way to see if he 
cyant gaff one. Someone tole him he could 
make shoestrings out o’ porpoise hide, but 

49 










EUCALYPTUS? 


bless ‘de Lawd' I don’t know what he wanted 
shoestrings fer, ’cause he ain’t got no shoes. 
Dose porpoises done roll out into big water, 
so Uke stops an’ catches hisself a couple of 
catfish. Dat was all he brung home dat night. 
Catfish is po’ food ’ceptin’ yo’ ain’t got noth¬ 
in’ else. Uke is jes flighty, ’at’s all.” 

A man who has no definite objective never 
gets any place. Uke isn’t the only flighty 
person in the world. If Uke had started after 
one kind of fish and stuck to the job, he would 
have hooked a few anyway. 

If we would all just set our lines for some 
one success and hold on like a bull pup pull¬ 
ing at a root there would be fewer of us finish¬ 
ing our lives with a mere string of bullheads. 


50 





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